BECCA MARX: Hoot Review from Harriet Brewing, July 23, 2015 — By all accounts, Thursday evening at the Hoot was HOT, tropical even. The audience members, usually so cool and collected, were sweating as much as those onstage. Even this Finnish woman found it a bit too reminiscent of a sauna. Everyone kept his or her clothes on, though Jim Walsh did at one point suggest visiting a local watering hole, sans wardrobe. For all of the perspiration, the couples in the crowd, and onstage cuddled up close and made it even hotter. Read more…

BECCA MARX: Hoot Review from Harriet Brewing, July 16, 2015 — Even before the Hoot happened on Thursday night at Harriet Brewing, I had an idea that it’d be a memorable one. Hoot patriarch Jim Walsh had written a piece about his affection for Hoot veteran Jeaneen Gauthier (Jan), and it occurred to me once more that Walsh doesn’t randomly pick these players. This particular line-up was one that I wasn’t familiar with, but as Walsh himself said, there was a “wealth of talent” onstage, a fact strikingly evident as all the players collaborated on Walsh’s own beauty of a song, “Homebodies (Don’t Be Careful With Your Love).” Read more…

JIM WALSH’S THE MAD RIPPLE HOOTENANNY THIS WEEK: “A Song With No End”— Dear Good People: Last Thursday after gorging on a delicious feast of a Hoot at Harriet with Tommy Mischke, James Loney, Jennifer Markey, Dan Israel, Jeff Schuller, Mayda Slice, Terry Walsh, and a cast of dozens, I found myself in the back alley taking in the final gasps of a glorious sunset over downtown Minneapolis with Miss Becky Kapell and a few others. Read more…

BECCA MARX: Hoot Report from Harriet Brewing, May 28, 2015 — People say there’s a magical quality about the Mad Ripple Hootenanny. If I had to choose one word to express the essence of the Hoot, it’d be: SPONTANEITY. I often find myself giving the venue a quick 360 degrees, and I’ve never been disappointed in my observations. Read more…

BECCA MARX: May 28th Hoot Preview — May is slipping through our fingers and in honor of the last Hoot in May, I have written a poem: “May you always showeth up, May the food trucks always be arrived, May the beer always floweth, May the glasses always be risen, May the stories always holdeth you, May the music always playeth, May you cometh again to Hoot in June…” Read more…

JIM WALSH’S THE MAD RIPPLE HOOTENANNY WEEK: “You Just Have To Be An Individual”— I just got back from the Washburn High School spring choir concert, where I witnessed a couple hundred teenagers raising their often cracking, off-key, and timid voices in song and dance and I’m here to say it was straight-up beautiful and life-affirming and all that good stuff that only young art in first full bloom provides. Read more…